Designed by Philip Johnson; completed 1984 New York, New York As arguably the first Postmodern building designed on a monumental, commercial scale, the AT&T Building (completed in 1984 by Philip Johnson) generated sufficient popular interest to be front-page news in the New York Times on 31 March 1978 and the cover story in Time on 8 January 1979, which portrayed the architect Philip Johnson cradling a model of the proposed design. In legitimizing Postmodern style and ideas, it reversed almost three decades of modern principles espoused by Mies van der Rohe that Johnson himself had practiced with the master in the Seagram Building (1958). Gone are the open plaza (the externalization of universal space); the understated, monochromatic, almost mute metaland- glass curtain wall; and the nonconformist, neo-Baroque setback from the avenue. Instead, Johnson’s building presses directly against the site line along the entire block of Madison Avenue between East 55th and East 56th Streets a...